For Thursday: King Lear, Act 1

NOTE: I said read Acts 1-2 for Thursday (which you can), but I forgot that the syllabus says only Act 1, which makes more sense. This is a BIG play with a lot of moving parts and characters, so let's take it slow. Besides, we'll never get through both acts in class on Thursday, and it's Election Day with all the resulting craziness, so just read the First Act. We'll hit 2-3 for next Tuesday.

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: How do you read Cordelia's response to King Lear in Act 1, Scene 1? Is she being obstinate? Spoiled/entitled? Innocent/naive? Is she testing him like he seems to be testing her? What does she mean when she says, "I shall never marry like my sisters/To love my father all" (13)? 

Q2: How does Goneril share some characteristics with Rose from A Thousand Acres, and why might Jane Smiley have been inspired by her character from the beginning? While most characters in the play see her actions as "unnatural," does Shakespeare allow us to see her side of things? Are we sympathetic with her? Does she have a legitimate greviance against her father? And related to this, is he trying to provoke her?

Q3: In many ways, King Lear is a response to Macbeth, with some of the same language and themes (Hecate is invoked, as is the sense of things being 'unnatural'). How might Edmund be a version of Macbeth himself, but one who is more honest with his motivations and actions? How does he tell the audience who he is and what he is doing? (something Macbeth never really does).

Q4: In many of Shakespeare's plays, he introduces a character called a Fool, who is a professional comedian whose job is to provoke the nobility. While speaking in apparent riddles and nonsense, they also speak the truth to power. What is the Fool's message to King Lear, and how much does he seem to understand of it? Do you think it goes over his head...or does he understand it, and choose to ignore it? 

For Tuesday: A Thousand Acres (1997)

On Thursday, we watched the first hour or so of A Thousand Acres, which is an adaptation of Jane Smiley's novel which is in turn a loose adaptation of Shakespeare's King Lear. There are some significant changes, as you'll see when we read the play, but most of the main machinery of the play emerges intact, including the relationships between the daughters and Lear himself. What changes is how the story is told from Virginia and Rose's perspective (Regan and Goneril in the play), and by the backstory Smiley adds to their tumultous life with their father. We'll come back to this perspective when we start reading Lear next week.

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: Why does the youngest daughter, Caroline, seem to refuse her father's offer of a one-third share in the company? What does she mean when instead of making up her father, she tells Virginia, "I hate the little girl stuff"? Does she seem to be doing this for the right reasons? 

Q2: How are Virginia and Rose a little like Lady Macbeth in Macbeth (at least before Act 5)? Why can they be seen as "fiendish wives" by some, even though their actions make sense in context? Are there any other other explicit connections between one or both of them to Lady Macbeth?

Q3: Why does Virginia strike up an adulterous romance with Jess Clark, the prodigial son who has returned to his father's farm? She seems to have a good marriage and a loving husband, unlike Rose, whose relationship with her husband hints at violence and disgust (especially of her recent operation). What might Jess see in her as well?

Q4: Rose drops a bombshell on Virginia the night of the storm, when she tells Virginia that their father had sex with them both for years (though Virginia claims not to remember any of this). Do you believe her? Is she saying this merely to get Virginia more on her side, and further away from their father & Caroline? Or was she simply waiting for the right moment to tell her (or maybe, waiting for Virginia to admit the truth herself)? NOTE: This isn't in Shakespeare, but is something Smiley added into her own novel. 

Q5: Larry Cook "Daddy" (or King Lear) is a figure of fear and malice in the movie, never kind, always menacing, and seeming to take pleasure in his daughter's disgrace. Why don't other people in the town see this, but instead, view him as a tragic, betrayed figure? And why does Caroline see the same "betrayed" father instead of the "betrayer"?  

Paper #2 assignment and A Thousand Acres

REMEMBER that we're going to start watching A Thousand Acres on Thursday, which is an adaptation of King Lear. Your second paper will be due on Tuesday, the day we finish the movie and start discussing it. 

English 3213

Paper #2: Magic or Madness?

INTRO: In Act 3, Scene 5, the character of Hecate enters the play, chiding the witches for their “trade and traffic” with Macbeth, and bidding the witches meet her at “the pit of Acheron…in the morning.” This scene could very well dispel the ambiguity of the play by making the witches, the magic, and a demon itself real, and potentially reducing Macbeth’s agency throughout the play. However, the scene also ties the play into the Elizabethan love of magic and devilry which we see in so many plays of the time, from Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus (where devils pull Dr. Faustus into hell itself), and Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (where fairies exist side-by-side with mortals and cast spells on them). So it can work, but it becomes a very different play than the one where the audience is left to interpret the witches’ role in Macbeth’s madness, leaving him at center stage.

PROMPT: For this short paper, you have been commissioned to adapt a new version of Macbeth for performance at ECU. But the question is, should this production focus on magic or madness? Should it emphasize that the spirit world is manipulating Macbeth for its own macabre ends, or should it leave the witches at the margins, focusing on the human drama of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth? Which one would make the better play in your opinion?

To support your staging, discuss ONE PASSAGE/SPEECH that you feel would most benefit from your approach. Close read the passage, explaining the ideas/language in the passage, and show how emphasizing the magic or the madness angle would aid your interpretation of this passage, and give the entire play more power and purpose. You can briefly hint at other scenes as well, but focus your analysis solely on this one passage. A “passage” should be no more than a page or two, or even one speech. Don’t do an entire scene from an act, since this is designed to be a short, focused assignment.

ALSO: This is a short paper, so shoot for around 3 pages, though you can do a bit more if necessary. You MUST quote from the passage in question and close read it carefully to fulfill the assignment (don’t rely on summaries and paraphrases). You can use outside sources from the William Shakespeare: A Very Short Introduction or other sources (or other productions) if you think this will help, but it’s not required.

DUE TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 5^th by 5pm

For Thursday: Macbeth, Acts 3-4

An RSC production of Macbeth 

Though there are 5 questions here (I couldn't help myself), you still only have to answer TWO of them. 

Q1: Act 3.5, the scene with Hecate, is largely considered to be the work of Thomas Middleton, a contemporary playwright who wrote a play about witches at roughly the same time of Macbeth (he adapted Macbeth after Shakespeare’s retirement to make more money). In reading this scene, does anything strike you as different from the rest of the play? The language? Metaphors? Characterization? Or would you have assumed that Shakespeare wrote this, too?

Q2: How informed is Lady Macbeth about the murder of Banquo and the attempted murder on Fleance (his son)? Is she still the mastermind of the play, or has Macbeth usurped her role? Is there any way to tell who’s calling the shots at this point?

Q3: The “Murderers” that Macbeth hires in 3.1 aren’t really murderers at this point in the play (it’s clear that they haven’t murdered before, and are not professional assassins). How does Macbeth convince them to murder Banquo and/or how does he justify it to himself? Why, too, does he hire murderers now instead of doing the job himself, as he did with Duncan?

Q4: In Act 4, scene 3, Malcolm tells Macduff that "black Macbeth/will seem as pure as snow, and the poor state/Esteem him as a lamb, being compared/With my confineless harms...there's no bottom, none/In my voluptousness" (143). Why does he threaten to be an even worse ruler than Macbeth, and vow to debauch women, ruin men, and destroy order?

Q5: In Scene 2, Lady Macduff tells her son that Macduff (who has fled lest he be killed by Macbeth) is "dead" and "a traitor." Why does she say this, especially as her son knows that neither of them are true? Is she joking with him, or being deadly serious? You might also account for her line, "Why, I can buy me twenty [husbands] at any market."

For Tuesday: Macbeth, Acts 1-2

NOTE: The version of Macbeth by Roman Polansky we watched in class on Thursday covers Acts 1 and up to Act 2.1, right before the murder. Since Act 2 is very short, this will bring you up to speed on all the action in the play, and help you visualize it as you read. But pay close attention to the language, since the language of Macbeth is some of his most evocative, and is utterly unlike anything we've read in class so far.

Answer TWO of the following: 

Q1: Though most of the play is in blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter), characters often end scenes with rhymed couplets, such as the following: “Away, and mock the time with fairest show./False face must hide what the false heart doth/know” (1.7). Why does Shakespeare do this? What does the flash of rhyme do for the play or the speech? How would we hear and experience this in the audience?

Q2: Most productions of the play portray Macbeth and Lady Macbeth as a couple that is fiercely in love (as we see in Polansky’s 1971 film). Is this corroborated in the text of Acts 1 and 2 itself? Where do we see a couple in love, rather than just another medieval arranged marriage? Why might this relationship be important for the audience to see, and hear, in the play itself?

Q3: One of the most famous speeches in the play is Macbeth’s “Is this a dagger which I see before me?” in Act 2.1. Read this speech carefully and discuss the construction of a particular line that would be difficult to translate into modern English. Why is this? What is Shakespeare trying to show us through this tortured syntax?

Q4: Macbeth is a play that is often staged historically, meaning its set in a time very close to the one Shakespeare portrays in the play. Why do you think this play might resist modernizing or setting in, say, modern-day New York or London? Discuss a scene or passage that might be difficult to realize in translation, and makes much more sense in an early medieval Scotland (as Polansky does).

For Tuesday: Ten Things I Hate About You (1999)

NOTE: We still have a bit of the film to watch, maybe 30 minutes or so, but feel free to answer these questions before we finish...OR, you can answer them sometime after class on Tuesday. But I want to grapple with the adaptation element of the film, since eventually this aspect will become important to your writing in the class (hint, hint). 

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: First, the most obvious question: can Shakespeare be Shakespeare without the language? While they make a few "easter egg" attempts to preserve his language, such as when Cameron (Lucentio) says, "I burn, I pine, I perish...", most of it is completely modern. Is the plot and characters enough to perserve the tone and feel of a Shakespearean comedy? Or is this merely a comedy "inspired by" Shakespeare? Try not just to say yes or no, explain WHY you think this could still count as an adaption or not. 

Q2: How might the film explain some aspect of the play which either doesn't make sense, or isn't really explained by Shakespeare? In other words, why might this film be a 'theory' or a 'staging' of the play, which answers some of the questions left by Shakespeare for the actors and the audience?  OR, how could we take some of the ideas in this film and apply them backwards to the play? 

Q3: When Kat tells her friend (who has no real counterpart in the play) that she intends to boycott the prom because it's an antiquated mating ritual, her friend replies, "oh, so we're making a statement...oh goody, something new and different for us!" It's a funny line, but why might it also be pertinent to the play itself? 

Q4: Kat and Patrick lack a big "courting" scene like we get in Act 2 of the play, though they have several smaller ones sprinkled throughout the play. According to the film, why does she begin to fall in love with him? Is it because he's "crazy"--or willing to defy the roles of a typical lover--or is it more superficial (he learns what she likes and pretends to like them)? In other words, is their relationship closer to the play or closer to Hollywood comedies? 

Q5: Even though the play distances itself from its Shakespearean source, how does it subtly marry itself to a Shakespearean identity throughout the play? How effective are these attempts? Are they merely there for the 'insider,' or do they actually add something to the film itself? 

For Tuesday: The Taming of the Shrew, Acts 4-5

NOTE: NO QUESTIONS for Tuesday, since we'll do an in-class writing about the very end of the play--so keep reading and finish for Tuesday's class! Here are some ideas to consider that might help you...

* If Katherine and Petruchio seem to be intellectual equals in Acts 2 and 3, why does he use falcon-taming metaphors to discuss his ‘breaking of her? Couldn’t he win her by sheer love and respect at this point?

* Read Katherine’s final speech carefully, where she basically chides women for going against their husbands. What is different about her language here? Is this sincere…or is this acting? And if so, for whom?

* Is Katherine turned into Christopher Sly by the end of the play? Is that basically the entire joke of the play: that he gets to tell her who she is, and she believes it? Are we sure the lesson takes (see above question).

* Why do you think Shakespeare never returns to the world of Sly and the Induction? Wouldn’t that soften the cruel end of the play, and make it just a joke—not “real” and not the true point of the play? Or would it make the play too literal? (“all the world’s a stage,” etc.).

* Some modern version of The Taming of the Shrew have ‘solved’ the problem of Kate’s sadistic taming by switching genders: that is, a woman plays Pertruchio, and a man played Katherine. What problems might this solve for the audience? Or is this merely another case of believing too much in appearances?

For Thursday: The Taming of the Shrew, Acts 2 & 3

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: How do you read the sparring match between Petruchio and Katherine in Act 2? Is it meant to be angry and threatening? Or light-hearted and flirtatious? Is he cynical, or sincerely intrigued? Is she grossly offended, or flattered? How do you “hear” this exchange? Consider lines such as, “Yet you are withered./’Tis with cares./I care not” (93).

Q2: The sisters Katherine and Bianca are clearly echoed in the later sisterly pair, Hero and Beatrice, but with a distinct difference. How do they contrast with the later pair, and what seems to be the defining nature of their relationship? Why might we also argue that as the father of two daughters, Shakespeare might have been drawing them from life?

Q3: At the end of Act 3, Gremio suggests that “Petruchio is Kated” (133). Does this mean that Petruchio is actually, against his better judgment, falling in love with her? And is she with him? Are we rooting for them to fall in love like Beatrice and Benedict? Or is this match doomed from the start (as Bianca suggests—“being mad herself, she’s madly mated”)?

Q4: Though Bianca is in the shadow of her older sister, she is hardly a push-over herself. How does she respond to the attempts of her lovers (Lucentio and Hortensio) to woo her in Act 3? Where do we hear some of Katherine’s wit, and scorn, in her replies? Why isn’t she seen as a “shrew” for turning them down?

For Tuesday: The Taming of the Shrew, Induction & Act 1

Read the first two acts (the Induction and Act 1) for Tuesday's class, and think of the world of Much Ado About Nothing as you do so. In a sense, all of Shakespeare's comedies are like reading the same play, only the characters have different names and he adds or subtracts a few of them. The landscape should be familiar, though there will be a few significant changes--mostly in the language (see below). 

The Paper #1 assignment (which I gave out in class) is in the post BELOW this one.. 

Answer TWO of the following: 

Q1: This might seem like an obvious question, but what is the purpose of the Induction given that the characters seem to be English (Christopher Sly, etc.) and hardly make an appearance in Act 1? How might we regard the Induction as a theory, or a lens, for interpreting the rest of the play (and esp. Act 1)?

Q2: Do the characters in The Taming of the Shrew speak more in prose or verse? How does this affect how we ‘hear’ the characters or read the play? Does it make the play more or less comic? On the other hand, are there characters who only speak prose in the play? Why might this be?

Q3: To prepare you for your Paper #1, what moments of déjà vu do you experience when reading this play after Much Ado About Nothing? Where do we see Shakespeare using the same comic building blocks in his writing, or using some of the same characters and speeches (since he wrote for largely the same actors in play after play)? For fun, where we might we see one of the actors in Much Ado in this play?

Q4: In Wells’ William Shakespeare, he explains that many people had trouble accepting that the great William Shakespeare could have been born a lowly nobody from Stratford. How could such a person write the great plays of Hamlet, King Lear, and Othello? However, why might we argue that such a person is the ideal candidate for writing plays like The Taming of the Shrew? What could someone from small-town England be able to see and understand (as evidenced in this play) more than an Oxford-educated Londoner?

Paper #1 assignment and Revised Course Schedule

English 3213: Shakespeare

Paper #1: Shakespeare’s Secret Sauce

INTRO: In Wells’ William Shakespeare: A Very Short Introduction, he notes that notonly did Shakespeare obsess over comedy for most of his career, but “it is typical of Shakespeare that he broadens [a comedy’s] emotional range by enclosing the farcical action with a serious framework” (71). These moments are almost part of Shakespeare’s comedic DNA, and you can find them in virtually every Shakespearean comedy. It’s fascinating to try to isolate these recurring themes, since this tell us not only how he wrote his plays, but what motivated him to do so. As a playwright, what did he find funny, compelling, disturbing, perplexing, and most of all, human? And how did he define a ‘comedy’?

PROMPT: For your first paper, I want you to discuss ONE specific element of Shakespeare’s comedy that repeats almost verbatim from Much Ado to The Shrew. You might call this variations on a theme, since it doesn’t have to presented in exactly the same way, but it should be the same ‘theme,’ meaning that if you put them side by side, you would go, “oh yeah, there it is again.” So the question is why does he repeat this element, and how does he change/adapt it from one play to the next? Can we tell that one version is earlier and one later? Does the language change? The types of characters? The dramatic situation? And most of all, does he make it a joke…or does he veer away from comedy altogether?

Some themes/elements you might consider are:

• Language—specific speeches, exchanges, jokes/puns, etc.
• Characters—stock types (the naïve lover, the feuding couple, the scheming villain, the saucy servant, the bumbling official, etc.)
• Scenes—specific interactions, comic confusions, pranks at other characters’ expense, etc.
• Genre—moments when we enter a different kind of play (tragedy, farce, etc.)
• Songs—the way he incorporates music/poetry from outside the play
• Meta moments—where he seems to be winking at the audience, showing his awareness of being an actor/playwright/poet
• Others…?

NOTE: Try to make it more than a compare/contrast essay. Look at it more as figuring out why he chose to repeat this element, what it reveals about his comedy, and how he might have expanded it from one play to the next (especially as he matured as an artist).

REQUIREMENTS

• Page limit optional, but we both know when you haven’t put in enough work!
• QUOTE from each play and examine the quotes—or as we say in English, “close reading.” Don’t just summarize what you see, SHOW us.
• Introduce quotations with the Act and Scene like so “Act 2.3,” etc., and cite the page number from your edition.
• DUE IN TWO WEEKS: Thursday, October 3^rd by 5pm

REVISED COURSE SCHEDULE

T 24     Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew, Induction-Act 1

R 26    The Taming of the Shrew, Acts 2-3 (ALSO: Originals Reading @ 3:30)

 

OCTOBER

T 1       Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew, Acts 4-5

R 3      Ten Things I Hate About You; Paper #1 due by 5pm

 

T 8       Ten Things continued

R 10    FALL BREAK

 

T 15     Film: Macbeth adaptation (TBA)

R 17    Film Continued & Wells, William Shakespeare, Chapter 6

 

T 22     Shakespeare, Macbeth, Acts 1-2

R 24    Shakespeare, Macbeth, Acts 3-4

 

T 29     Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 5  

R 31    Film: A Thousand Acres (1997)

 

NOVEMBER

T 5       Film Continued / Paper #2 due by 5pm

R 7      Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 1

 

T 12     Shakespeare, King Lear, Acts 2-3

R 14    Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 4-5

 

T 19     Shakespeare, The Tempest, Acts 1-2

R 21    Shakespeare, The Tempest, Acts 3-5

 

T 26     Paper #3 due by 5pm (no class)

R 28    THANKSGIVING BREAK

 

DECEMBER

T 3       Wells, William Shakespeare, Chapter 8 & Epilogue

R 5      Adaptation Discussions/Wrap Up

 

FINAL EXAM PRESENTATIONS: TBA

For Thursday: William Shakespeare: A Very Short Introduction, Chapter 5, "Shakespeare and Comic Form"

For Thursday's class, read Chapter 5 from the William Shakespeare book, and we'll continue our discussion about Shakespeare's background by discussing his comedies. What did he understand a 'comedy' was, and what makes his comedies all a generic unit, like his tragedies, or histories? NO QUESTIONS to respond to, though we'll have an in-class writing over it on Thursday which will feed into your Paper #1 assignment (which I'll always hand out).

However, here are some ideas to consider as you read...

* Shakespeare wrote basically four types of plays: comedies, tragedies, histories, and what we call 'romances,' which combine the first two categories. What does it say about him that at least half of his entire output was comedy? Why might he have prefered this genre to any of the others, considering he kept going back to it, even at the end of his career?

* Of all Shakespeare's plays, the comedies are often the most derivative (or borrowed, that is), as almost all the plots come from other plays, books, and poems. Why do you think Shakespeare preferred his comedies to be so second-hand? Is this still true of comedies today? Are most of them 'reboots'?

* What consistent themes, characters, or situtations seem to crop up most often in his comedies, according to Wells' summary of them? Why might these have particularly interested Shakespeare?

* Why does Shakespeare always set his plays in far-off locales when they could have just as easily taken place in England (and indeed, many of them reference English places and some characters have English names)? What might this have allowed him to do under the guise of "comedy"? 

* How do Shakespeare's later comedies differ from his earlier ones? What might have accounted for this biographically? Artistically?

* Why might have Shakespeare gravitated more and more towards prose by the middle of his career (around the time of Much Ado)?